Whoever, in middle age, attempts to realize the wishes and hopes of his early youth, invariably deceives himself. Each ten years of a man's life has its own fortunes, its own hopes, its own desires.

Man is a simple being, and however rich, varied, and unfathomable he may be, the cycle of his situations is soon run through.

He who does not see the whole world in his friends, does not deserve that the world should hear of him.

The old lose one of the greatest privileges of man, for they are no longer judged by their contemporaries.

The people who are absent are the ideal; those who are present seem to be quite commonplace.

How many years must a man do nothing, before he can at all know what is to be done and how to do it!

You can put up with everything in this world except not with a long stretch of beautiful days.